Every time something pops up on my 'puter's screen the message is generally so off-base as to be laughable. ("We're sorry, your computer has commited an irrecoverable error," for example.)
Google's "Similar pages" link found next to each and every hit from their search engine produces a ton of unusuable schlock. Google is gonna have to be pretty smart if they can come up with anything that gives even remotely relevant advice from a toolbar.
So the people that run underage escort services featuring "call-boys" out of their town-homes and even the White House are going to be prosecuting us for deviant sex?
See the headlines of the Washington Times (June 29, 1989) "Homosexual prostitution ring ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush." Photoshop, you say? I'm old enough to remember when the paper came out. Watch the documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" that was to air on the Discovery channel on May 3, 1994 but was suppressed.
Come on now. Kazaa "authorized" them to do it (according to the article). This is a little like prosecuting people who claim the devil made them do it. We think they're insane; not criminals.
Well, maybe criminally insane... but even so, can one criminally download anything? Hmmmmmmm... ? Afterall, it is all there just for the taking on Kazaa... offered for free. Hell, Kazaa is FFFRRREEEEEEEE!!!!
Just like Robin Hood and his merry band. Were the starving of England criminals because they ate the King's food and drank the King's wine, all approppriated by Robin Hood's valiant hoarde?
We the people are starving for entertainment. The world is a shambles. We need a little fantasy. Kazaa gives people something to do. Don't prosecute them.
Gee, I didn't know DRM is so important... gotta find out more about it. Hmmmmmmmm.... wouldn't want any economist to fail now, would I?
Oh, and BTW, from what little I do know about DRM... why are the words "interoperability, and competing standards" in the same sentence alongside it? Just doesn't make sense.
I paid $8500 bucks for my album collection (starting in 1976!!!) and I ***KNOW*** that most every other fellow tune sucker's collection out there isn't worth more than $1889 bucks.
OK, I'll admit it. I've done alot of work with computers (over the course of about 15 years). I hide in my house; people want me to work on their machines so much. Jeesh, I used to be a traveling computer consultant, for gods' sakes (another reason to hide in my house).
I don't play computer games. Period. (I know how to remove all of them from even the new Windows OS's.) Neither do I maintain a database server at home, like I did at work, nor have I built a digital non-linear video editing station. I don't IM, do digital photography, or surf just for the sake of surfing. I don't pipe TV into my graphics card, and the last thing I want to do on a computer is install (and especially re-install) the OS.
I don't get intrinsic joy out of the OS (unlike those who responded above, apparently). If I'm going to reinstall the OS I want to be paid for it. (***Every*** OS gets finicky if played with long and hard enough.) That said, I'm quite familiar with UNIX, MAC, WIN and OS/400 programming and hardware platforms. I've handled in-house or remote maintenance and installations on all of them.
All in all, until about five years ago I was an average, boring techie type of guy that fixed computers but did nothing constructive with them. This went on for a good ten years.
Then, I found my killer app. I'm into electronic music creation using music notation software and sound samples. I can write music on the screen using word processor-type functions and then have the results played and recorded in CD-quality sound. Wooohoooaa!
Of course, it has been a ***royal*** pain in the butt to use and figure out. (My opinion of contemporary computing is that it is about on par with Charles Babbage's analytical steam engine, so one can't fault the state of the art too much. Quantum computing is fast approaching and will make discussions like the one here moot.)
Yes, features of the electronic music creation software don't work like they are supposed to (surprise!), special equipment must be bought, the sound samples need editing before being used, and any feasible editor looks like the cockpit of an airplane. What's more, few in the computer world write in detailed, articulate English... and even less so concerning my particular interest. Of those that do, generally they won't share their knowledge because that is what gives them a professional edge in the arena where most who use this software compete... i.e. scoring big-budget films).
There are a lot of downsides to my hobby. But heavens!... now that I have come through most of the hoops by assiduous practice and experiment I now can boast of an entire orchestra, as large as I need or want, at my command... and without having to suck up to the conductor of the New York Philharmonic! (He wouldn't be able to conduct my works the way I want anyway). I'm a happy man.
Oh yes... I forgot the catch. On top of all that time and effort... above and beyond the minor details of learning music theory, how to play the piano, coming up with decent music of my own, earning a living, getting my be-lated college degree... the software side of my hobby alone has set me back five grand. Yes, those sound samples are expensive. (Garritan Strings, Dan Dean woodwinds and brass, Carlysle timpani, as well as all the other trash that I tried just to find that reasonable combination, etc.)
Now at least two of that five grand, though, is the electronic music creation software itself (and it's accoutrements). If Linux could boast of an app to rival Sibelius or Finale then I would use Linux. If I could save several hundred dollars by using a Linux app I would use Linux.
But I can't use a Linux app to do what I do, for any price.
That is why I don't use Linux at home. As you read the following, remember, I've had to master Windows in order to accomplish my hobby. (I run four computers at home just so that at
Think of computer and programming skills as an enhancement to other, more marketable resume items (your future employer will). Such expertise might be just the thing to get an edge up in management, though, if you can stomach to "do" management.
Let's face it./.'s played the Wheel of Fortune and lost. Now it is time to pick up the pieces, dust ourselves off, and retrain. Unless you're 45, overweight, and married a rich broad.. like me.
People who want to do music... and I'm IT staff, who is getting a statistics degree, yet writes classical music as a hobby for fun... find that they are stymied by antiquated and just plain dumb music software.
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is twenty+plus years old. Imagine if you were trying to do your networking using Banyan... oh, never heard of Banyan? Think on it.
Yet MIDI is what someone who WRITES music must use to export notes over into a program that will PLAY the music they write (i.e. a sequencer) with any degree of real sound. By itself, MIDI just does not support the nuances and articulations of music desk-top publishing, the environments known as notation programs. And also, notation programs can't adequately play back the notes (the sound is cheesey at best).
So people, myself included, resort to composing in one or the other, or perhaps in both a sequencer and a notation program simultaneously, each program running on a separate machine! Is that stone-age or what!!! Imagine if that was what was required to do word processing!
With the current state of MIDI, the computer isn't even able to write what you play into it from a keyboard (without hours and hours of tweaking and guesstimation). We haven't even come that far, people!
Oh, did I mention that the special cables and splitters required to network MIDI devices together are about 2000% more expensive than any other cable connections you are likely to buy! $600.00 all told to hook up three PCs with a MIDI keyboard!!! This is true of Macs as well as PCs.
No, computers AREN'T music friendly and it is a needless shame. Something must be done about it.
Getting any old job just to put it on your resume to record you're working is stupid. No, it is moronic. It doesn't mean you are a go-getter. It doesn't mean you are desirable. The moron that suggested that is totally from another planet. (Jerk!)
It's real easy, people. Face it, if you got all sorts of little rug-rats and a slouch of a wife sitting home screaming, "Feed me! Feed me!," all the time then you got no chance. You also got no choice. You're gonna hafta go out there and suck up.
Now, you were smart enough to get into computers. Stay smart enough to be celibate.
Abstinence, boys!!! Save us all the stench of your clones running around. The world's too crowded as it is.
In the meantime if you want something to do... try going back to school for ten years and becoming a chemist.
Good riddance to the American computer industry. It sucked as I was saving their butts. It sucks now that they no longer want their butts saved. So let 'em swing high!
I'm one of a growing number of the "highly educated workers" that Scott Kirwin, founder of IT Professionals Association of America (sic), referred to when he noted, "The problem is not a lack of highly educated workers. The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S."
So Scott's the founder, huh?
I say let the lot of 'em fix their own g**d&mn computers, if they're able. None of them will get any further help from me.
(Suddenly karma points on/. don't seem so important anymore. Pity, huh?)
I have an average karma rating of 1.2 (that's out of 24 extensive replies to/. posts). Why is that?! Many on/. are now just parroting what I said a couple years ago. What a difference a year makes?! Look at what I wrote, here are some subject headings:
*Can't really call it the "Computer Age," can you? *I've left that nonsense (re: "Industry Standard" *Paycuts in IT?) *Consumers will begin not to buy creative products *All this seems moot to me (re:Oracle's Hostile Takeover Bid For PeopleSoft) *I do believe we have struck a nerve *Can we blame Bill for the porn now, too? (re:Bill Gates, Entertainment God?) *When will Geeks learn the Feds can warehouse them? *REBATES ARE A SCAM *I do believe slashdotters are finally waking up *I am realizing the Net cannot be private again
I'm seeing concensus about these issues now, and the opinions were mine years before others picked up on them!!!
My point? One definition of intelligence is an ability to predict the future. At best, for at least a couple of years now intelligent consideration of what has been happening to the IT industry has been coloured by emotions related to how profitable the whole IT adventure used to be.
That emotional attachment is beginning to thin out a bit and/.'s are beginning to understand alternative points of view... like REALITY (see list below).
Now that this is occuring, will/.'s start re-evaluating such issues as professionalization and organization that I raised in this forum three years ago? (Search on the subject indices above.)
Until the IT workforce commands respect from management the following outline delineating corporate relationships will still apply.
Corporations 101
(for the new employee)
1. Management is not there to help.
2. If you actually understood what management was saying, you would quit.
3. Don't bother trying to understand what role management plays in a corporation. They don't know, and nobody else does either.
4. If you don't do what management says, everything works out just fine.
5. Excellence is the farthest thing from management's "mind." Uppermost is fooling people into believing that it is.
6. Management doesn't mind presiding over a corporation comprised simply of itself and a Human Resources department. And if push comes to shove, they can get away without the Human Resources department.
7. Stock price is the barometer by which one can tell how well management's retirement fund is padded.
8. The CEO banks upon being quietly and summarily dismissed, so to walk away with the golden parachute negotiated beforehand.
9. Every executive hopes to become CEO.
10. This is the best system the world has to offer.
I, for one, refuse to call this the Computer Age until this issue is addressed. Or we go to a form of computing that can't be interrupted directly by power outtages (chemical, for example). And that may come about before electrical utilities upgrade their grid.
Oh, and as for the expense. If management had set aside a half-percent of the profits for the last 30 years, and invested it wisely, it would have taken care of it.
While it is true that I can't compete with the young when it comes to willingness to be exploited, I look forward to a nice lawsuit when its my turn to experience ageism. Its discrimination, plain and simple, and that's why I've kept a discrimination lawsuit slush fund for just such an occasion. Trouble is, with the recession raging (... just when you thought it couldn't get worse!...) there's always a bum reason that companies can give not to hire ANYONE. If they don't hire, then I can't sue. But as soon as I see they obviously preferred a yourner person with less qualifications to myself... look out!!!
So, should a company that manufactures equipment designed to do scientific research "overpromote" the capability of its new system to, say, count the number of foreign bodies in a specimen of plasma? Or should a company which manufacturers a defibrilator "overpromote" the effectiveness of its new model's "hands off" mode ("Now detects arhythmia through clothing!!!)? Perhaps we can agree that this shouldn't be.
But should a company be obliged to tell me, the consumer, that that killer app which I salivate over involves working with technology that is far older than the 1.44MB floppy drive (which I routinely avoid using at any cost)?
The killer app that I refer to (in my case) is MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface, which can be used to play back and record written musical notation through soundfont technology. What the hype doesn't tell one is that the MIDI interface hasn't been updated since the days of M$ DOS, and so MIDI device drivers aren't capable (for WHATEVER reason) of passing program control to and from the tone generators, like the way that any other device on my machine can do! Consider this: It is MIDI 1.1... MIDI 2 was a dream that died quite a while ago. You may not have been born.
But as a typical computer user, I don't know that. And what's more, would never suspect otherwise. I just bought my soundcard. It should work!
Now say I'm somewhat competent and have a computer beefy enough, so I get my $220.00 soundcard set up with the brand new copy of Windows XP that I bought for $300.00 (the sales guy said the soundcard needed it), and I succeed at rendering and recording some written musical notation (on the $300.00 musical notation software of my choice). It only took a week to do and I'm thrilled. I can't wait to try out modifying the $100 bucks worth of soundfonts that I used to make this music. The next day, I get up and install a $40 soundfont editor so that I can do this.
But as soon as I do so, I discover that not only doesn't the soundfont editor work... no sound... but in addition my musical notation software doesn't playback either! I'm stunned. There's nothing in the documentation which indicates why such a disaster should happen.
I bought the platinum model, so I have telephone tech support. The person at the other end hurriedly explains the situation to me, says it can be corrected by buying another soundcard, and asks if I want to be sent over to sales.
A thousand bucks later, and the guy asks me if I want to be transferred to sales. What am I gonna say? "Yeah, I'll take half-a-dozen."
Is anyone suggesting that only after reading over-generalized FAQs and interminable helpfiles, manuals and tutorials, after visiting websites and knowledge bases, and struggling for MONTHS (maybe YEARS) to make my latest and greatest soundcard perform as its manufacturer claimed it should, that I should then have to discover on my own that said soundcard manufacturer was merely talking out of its rear-end, and that I should be made to feel like I am no closer to achieving my musical goals than I was prior to spending lots of my money and lots of my time?
Is that person insane?, that I should be allowed to fitfully come to some glimmer of understanding six months later that, in order to pursue my musical goals, I will need one piece of MIDI hardware for each of the 6 apps that I need to run simulataneously? (Blurb For Marketing: Most machines have only 5 PCI slots.)
What am I as the consumer supposed to think?
I'll tell you what consumers begin to think. What they always think when stuff like this happens. They re-evaluate the technology industry as a whole and begin to lower expectations as to what it can and what it cannot do. They begin NOT to buy stuff, muttering, "It'll probably never work anyway." They take with a grain of salt EVERYTHING claimed by manufacturers, and back off from any company which offers truly creative products.
Slashdot Mirror
Yup, this is what visiting the wrong website in China could get you:
6 22,00.html
5 /220905dehumanization.htm
http://www.guardian.co.uk/china/story/0,7369,1568
The beauty products from the skin of executed Chinese prisoners
(The London Guardian, 9-13-05)
Wanna see pictures?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/september200
Every time something pops up on my 'puter's screen the message is generally so off-base as to be laughable. ("We're sorry, your computer has commited an irrecoverable error," for example.)
Google's "Similar pages" link found next to each and every hit from their search engine produces a ton of unusuable schlock. Google is gonna have to be pretty smart if they can come up with anything that gives even remotely relevant advice from a toolbar.
I'll believe it when I see it.
Try these sites:
1 .htm#article2
t m#article19
y of.htm
http://www.newsmakingnews.com/sexandcapitol7,18,0
(full text of many news articles)
http://www.freerepublic.com/forum/a388cd49f5ce8.h
(Sex, Lies, Videotape, Teenagers, Drugs, Blackmail, and Death)
To see the entire "Conspiracy of Silence" documentary:
http://www.rense.com/general61/appallingconspirac
So the people that run underage escort services featuring "call-boys" out of their town-homes and even the White House are going to be prosecuting us for deviant sex?
g .html
See the headlines of the Washington Times (June 29, 1989) "Homosexual prostitution ring ensnares VIPs with Reagan, Bush." Photoshop, you say? I'm old enough to remember when the paper came out. Watch the documentary "Conspiracy of Silence" that was to air on the Discovery channel on May 3, 1994 but was suppressed.
http://www.prisonplanet.com/archive_elite_sex_rin
And they weren't Linux-based.
That's what I bought a cell phone for, actually. Don't take it away!
Come on now. Kazaa "authorized" them to do it (according to the article). This is a little like prosecuting people who claim the devil made them do it. We think they're insane; not criminals.
... but even so, can one criminally download anything? Hmmmmmmm ... ? Afterall, it is all there just for the taking on Kazaa ... offered for free. Hell, Kazaa is FFFRRREEEEEEEE!!!!
Well, maybe criminally insane
Just like Robin Hood and his merry band. Were the starving of England criminals because they ate the King's food and drank the King's wine, all approppriated by Robin Hood's valiant hoarde?
We the people are starving for entertainment. The world is a shambles. We need a little fantasy. Kazaa gives people something to do. Don't prosecute them.
They won't be able to afford them. Whatever will they do to take up their spare time?
(hahahah)
Gee, I didn't know DRM is so important ... gotta find out more about it. Hmmmmmmmm .... wouldn't want any economist to fail now, would I?
... why are the words "interoperability, and competing standards" in the same sentence alongside it? Just doesn't make sense.
Oh, and BTW, from what little I do know about DRM
I paid $8500 bucks for my album collection (starting in 1976!!!) and I ***KNOW*** that most every other fellow tune sucker's collection out there isn't worth more than $1889 bucks.
('Think I got a season pass, Martha.)
OK, I'll admit it. I've done alot of work with computers (over the course of about 15 years). I hide in my house; people want me to work on their machines so much. Jeesh, I used to be a traveling computer consultant, for gods' sakes (another reason to hide in my house).
... and even less so concerning my particular interest. Of those that do, generally they won't share their knowledge because that is what gives them a professional edge in the arena where most who use this software compete ... i.e. scoring big-budget films).
... now that I have come through most of the hoops by assiduous practice and experiment I now can boast of an entire orchestra, as large as I need or want, at my command ... and without having to suck up to the conductor of the New York Philharmonic! (He wouldn't be able to conduct my works the way I want anyway). I'm a happy man.
... I forgot the catch. On top of all that time and effort ... above and beyond the minor details of learning music theory, how to play the piano, coming up with decent music of my own, earning a living, getting my be-lated college degree ... the software side of my hobby alone has set me back five grand. Yes, those sound samples are expensive. (Garritan Strings, Dan Dean woodwinds and brass, Carlysle timpani, as well as all the other trash that I tried just to find that reasonable combination, etc.)
I don't play computer games. Period. (I know how to remove all of them from even the new Windows OS's.) Neither do I maintain a database server at home, like I did at work, nor have I built a digital non-linear video editing station. I don't IM, do digital photography, or surf just for the sake of surfing. I don't pipe TV into my graphics card, and the last thing I want to do on a computer is install (and especially re-install) the OS.
I don't get intrinsic joy out of the OS (unlike those who responded above, apparently). If I'm going to reinstall the OS I want to be paid for it. (***Every*** OS gets finicky if played with long and hard enough.) That said, I'm quite familiar with UNIX, MAC, WIN and OS/400 programming and hardware platforms. I've handled in-house or remote maintenance and installations on all of them.
All in all, until about five years ago I was an average, boring techie type of guy that fixed computers but did nothing constructive with them. This went on for a good ten years.
Then, I found my killer app. I'm into electronic music creation using music notation software and sound samples. I can write music on the screen using word processor-type functions and then have the results played and recorded in CD-quality sound. Wooohoooaa!
Of course, it has been a ***royal*** pain in the butt to use and figure out. (My opinion of contemporary computing is that it is about on par with Charles Babbage's analytical steam engine, so one can't fault the state of the art too much. Quantum computing is fast approaching and will make discussions like the one here moot.)
Yes, features of the electronic music creation software don't work like they are supposed to (surprise!), special equipment must be bought, the sound samples need editing before being used, and any feasible editor looks like the cockpit of an airplane. What's more, few in the computer world write in detailed, articulate English
There are a lot of downsides to my hobby. But heavens!
Oh yes
Now at least two of that five grand, though, is the electronic music creation software itself (and it's accoutrements). If Linux could boast of an app to rival Sibelius or Finale then I would use Linux. If I could save several hundred dollars by using a Linux app I would use Linux.
But I can't use a Linux app to do what I do, for any price.
That is why I don't use Linux at home. As you read the following, remember, I've had to master Windows in order to accomplish my hobby. (I run four computers at home just so that at
Don't tell the Supremes about it, OK?
Novell/Windows stuff?
Think of computer and programming skills as an enhancement to other, more marketable resume items (your future employer will). Such expertise might be just the thing to get an edge up in management, though, if you can stomach to "do" management.
/.'s played the Wheel of Fortune and lost. Now it is time to pick up the pieces, dust ourselves off, and retrain. Unless you're 45, overweight, and married a rich broad .. like me.
Let's face it.
So I've got a CD quota, you tell me? Hmmmm. News to me. Did I miss something here?
Perhaps if the corporations were just up front about the whole quota thing, you know.
Was $94.00 bucks this past quarter enough? Did I do my fair share? I don't know. I can't tell.
People who want to do music ... and I'm IT staff, who is getting a statistics degree, yet writes classical music as a hobby for fun ... find that they are stymied by antiquated and just plain dumb music software.
... oh, never heard of Banyan? Think on it.
The Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI) is twenty+plus years old. Imagine if you were trying to do your networking using Banyan
Yet MIDI is what someone who WRITES music must use to export notes over into a program that will PLAY the music they write (i.e. a sequencer) with any degree of real sound. By itself, MIDI just does not support the nuances and articulations of music desk-top publishing, the environments known as notation programs. And also, notation programs can't adequately play back the notes (the sound is cheesey at best).
So people, myself included, resort to composing in one or the other, or perhaps in both a sequencer and a notation program simultaneously, each program running on a separate machine! Is that stone-age or what!!! Imagine if that was what was required to do word processing!
With the current state of MIDI, the computer isn't even able to write what you play into it from a keyboard (without hours and hours of tweaking and guesstimation). We haven't even come that far, people!
Oh, did I mention that the special cables and splitters required to network MIDI devices together are about 2000% more expensive than any other cable connections you are likely to buy! $600.00 all told to hook up three PCs with a MIDI keyboard!!! This is true of Macs as well as PCs.
No, computers AREN'T music friendly and it is a needless shame. Something must be done about it.
Getting any old job just to put it on your resume to record you're working is stupid. No, it is moronic. It doesn't mean you are a go-getter. It doesn't mean you are desirable. The moron that suggested that is totally from another planet. (Jerk!)
... try going back to school for ten years and becoming a chemist.
It's real easy, people. Face it, if you got all sorts of little rug-rats and a slouch of a wife sitting home screaming, "Feed me! Feed me!," all the time then you got no chance. You also got no choice. You're gonna hafta go out there and suck up.
Now, you were smart enough to get into computers. Stay smart enough to be celibate.
Abstinence, boys!!! Save us all the stench of your clones running around. The world's too crowded as it is.
In the meantime if you want something to do
Or better yet, try some spam!!!
Good riddance to the American computer industry. It sucked as I was saving their butts. It sucks now that they no longer want their butts saved. So let 'em swing high!
/. don't seem so important anymore. Pity, huh?)
I'm one of a growing number of the "highly educated workers" that Scott Kirwin, founder of IT Professionals Association of America (sic), referred to when he noted, "The problem is not a lack of highly educated workers. The problem is a lack of highly educated workers willing to work for the minimum wage or lower in the U.S."
So Scott's the founder, huh?
I say let the lot of 'em fix their own g**d&mn computers, if they're able. None of them will get any further help from me.
(Suddenly karma points on
there's no need ... I can't compete with the young's willingness to be exploited
I have an average karma rating of 1.2 (that's out of 24 extensive replies to /. posts). Why is that?! Many on /. are now just parroting what I said a couple years ago. What a difference a year makes?! Look at what I wrote, here are some subject headings:
/.'s are beginning to understand alternative points of view ... like REALITY (see list below).
/.'s start re-evaluating such issues as professionalization and organization that I raised in this forum three years ago? (Search on the subject indices above.)
*Can't really call it the "Computer Age," can you?
*I've left that nonsense (re: "Industry Standard" *Paycuts in IT?)
*Consumers will begin not to buy creative products
*All this seems moot to me (re:Oracle's Hostile Takeover Bid For PeopleSoft)
*I do believe we have struck a nerve
*Can we blame Bill for the porn now, too? (re:Bill Gates, Entertainment God?)
*When will Geeks learn the Feds can warehouse them?
*REBATES ARE A SCAM
*I do believe slashdotters are finally waking up
*I am realizing the Net cannot be private again
I'm seeing concensus about these issues now, and the opinions were mine years before others picked up on them!!!
My point? One definition of intelligence is an ability to predict the future. At best, for at least a couple of years now intelligent consideration of what has been happening to the IT industry has been coloured by emotions related to how profitable the whole IT adventure used to be.
That emotional attachment is beginning to thin out a bit and
Now that this is occuring, will
Until the IT workforce commands respect from management the following outline delineating corporate relationships will still apply.
Corporations 101
(for the new employee)
1. Management is not there to help.
2. If you actually understood what management was saying, you would quit.
3. Don't bother trying to understand what role management plays in a corporation. They don't know, and nobody else does either.
4. If you don't do what management says, everything works out just fine.
5. Excellence is the farthest thing from management's "mind." Uppermost is fooling people into believing that it is.
6. Management doesn't mind presiding over a corporation comprised simply of itself and a Human Resources department. And if push comes to shove, they can get away without the Human Resources department.
7. Stock price is the barometer by which one can tell how well management's retirement fund is padded.
8. The CEO banks upon being quietly and summarily dismissed, so to walk away with the golden parachute negotiated beforehand.
9. Every executive hopes to become CEO.
10. This is the best system the world has to offer.
I, for one, refuse to call this the Computer Age until this issue is addressed. Or we go to a form of computing that can't be interrupted directly by power outtages (chemical, for example). And that may come about before electrical utilities upgrade their grid.
Oh, and as for the expense. If management had set aside a half-percent of the profits for the last 30 years, and invested it wisely, it would have taken care of it.
What all does management do, anyway?!
When will Geeks learn the Feds can warehouse them indefinitely? And probably prefer to do so.
Lots of room down on the farm. (Go write yer Congressman!)
While it is true that I can't compete with the young when it comes to willingness to be exploited, I look forward to a nice lawsuit when its my turn to experience ageism. Its discrimination, plain and simple, and that's why I've kept a discrimination lawsuit slush fund for just such an occasion. Trouble is, with the recession raging (... just when you thought it couldn't get worse! ...) there's always a bum reason that companies can give not to hire ANYONE. If they don't hire, then I can't sue. But as soon as I see they obviously preferred a yourner person with less qualifications to myself ... look out!!!
Afterall, how do know his satellites aren't transmitting it. In fact, how does *HE*know?!!
So, should a company that manufactures equipment designed to do scientific research "overpromote" the capability of its new system to, say, count the number of foreign bodies in a specimen of plasma? Or should a company which manufacturers a defibrilator "overpromote" the effectiveness of its new model's "hands off" mode ("Now detects arhythmia through clothing!!!)? Perhaps we can agree that this shouldn't be.
... MIDI 2 was a dream that died quite a while ago. You may not have been born.
... no sound ... but in addition my musical notation software doesn't playback either! I'm stunned. There's nothing in the documentation which indicates why such a disaster should happen.
But should a company be obliged to tell me, the consumer, that that killer app which I salivate over involves working with technology that is far older than the 1.44MB floppy drive (which I routinely avoid using at any cost)?
The killer app that I refer to (in my case) is MIDI, Musical Instrument Digital Interface, which can be used to play back and record written musical notation through soundfont technology. What the hype doesn't tell one is that the MIDI interface hasn't been updated since the days of M$ DOS, and so MIDI device drivers aren't capable (for WHATEVER reason) of passing program control to and from the tone generators, like the way that any other device on my machine can do! Consider this: It is MIDI 1.1
But as a typical computer user, I don't know that. And what's more, would never suspect otherwise. I just bought my soundcard. It should work!
Now say I'm somewhat competent and have a computer beefy enough, so I get my $220.00 soundcard set up with the brand new copy of Windows XP that I bought for $300.00 (the sales guy said the soundcard needed it), and I succeed at rendering and recording some written musical notation (on the $300.00 musical notation software of my choice). It only took a week to do and I'm thrilled. I can't wait to try out modifying the $100 bucks worth of soundfonts that I used to make this music. The next day, I get up and install a $40 soundfont editor so that I can do this.
But as soon as I do so, I discover that not only doesn't the soundfont editor work
I bought the platinum model, so I have telephone tech support. The person at the other end hurriedly explains the situation to me, says it can be corrected by buying another soundcard, and asks if I want to be sent over to sales.
A thousand bucks later, and the guy asks me if I want to be transferred to sales. What am I gonna say? "Yeah, I'll take half-a-dozen."
Is anyone suggesting that only after reading over-generalized FAQs and interminable helpfiles, manuals and tutorials, after visiting websites and knowledge bases, and struggling for MONTHS (maybe YEARS) to make my latest and greatest soundcard perform as its manufacturer claimed it should, that I should then have to discover on my own that said soundcard manufacturer was merely talking out of its rear-end, and that I should be made to feel like I am no closer to achieving my musical goals than I was prior to spending lots of my money and lots of my time?
Is that person insane?, that I should be allowed to fitfully come to some glimmer of understanding six months later that, in order to pursue my musical goals, I will need one piece of MIDI hardware for each of the 6 apps that I need to run simulataneously? (Blurb For Marketing: Most machines have only 5 PCI slots.)
What am I as the consumer supposed to think?
I'll tell you what consumers begin to think. What they always think when stuff like this happens. They re-evaluate the technology industry as a whole and begin to lower expectations as to what it can and what it cannot do. They begin NOT to buy stuff, muttering, "It'll probably never work anyway." They take with a grain of salt EVERYTHING claimed by manufacturers, and back off from any company which offers truly creative products.
Perhaps we can agree